Same Address

Same Address
Stamps and acrylic on canvas, 50x60cm

PART 1: SKETCH AND CONCEPT

I have an idea!

I also have a few other things:

• a bunch of well travelled postage stamps. My grandfather used to collect them. he would take them off old envelopes and his friends and co-workers would give him the stamps from their own correspondence too. But because they are used, they have value other than sentimental. They sit on a shelf in a bunch of stamp catalogues gathering dust.
• an old high school self-portrait painted on canvas that gives me so much dysphoria 
• an over abundance of paper and stationary
• a sense of desperation over the state of humanity and our planet

So here's the idea: I wanna make a shadowbox Earth from coloured paper. I'll use the self-portrait as a canvas and cover it with the postage stamps. I'll arrange the postage stamps so that they spell "we are here". I'll mount the shadowbox Earth in the canvas. It'll be called "Same address".

Postage stamps are so varied, from technology, to places, to flora and fauna to art and anything you can think off is depicted on them so visually is like a cacophony of humanity, and the fact that they are used and have travelled makes it even better. 

I also love the idea of covering a self-portrait, which in itself is a very self-centred thing, with something that represents humanity and our planet a a whole is very poetic and powerful.

I won't be buying any supplies to make this, maybe except for glue. But the rest will be using up leftovers and recycling stuff I already have.

PART 2: THE COVERUP

This was a cocktail of emotion...and a lot of dust. This thing has been stored behind my closet for the longest time and it had the dustlayer to show it!

This painting makes me dysphoric. Or at least it used to. Don't get me wrong, I was very proud of it at the time that I made it and even today. It's a good painting. Its just not an honest portrait. Painting over it  was cathatric and very bittersweet. 

The paint I used over it, is paint from THE JAR. 

What's THE JAR?

THE JAR is where surplus paint from other projesct ends up. I always feel weird washing out excess paint from my pallete when I'm done. Seems so wasteful. So I mix it all up in a frankenpaint that I use as a base for other paintings. 

What I didn't realise is just how transparent the paint in THE JAR is.

Two layers in and it still shows through.

That wouldn't be a problem if I'd stick to the originl plan with the shadow box Earth mounted in a hole in the canvas. However, that won't happen. I overestimated what I have in my crafting paper stash. I dont have anything the size I need, so I will fall back on painting. But now I'm worried it will show through.

PART 3: COVERUP FIX

I could have went in with anoter billion layers of paint from THE JAR but that's tedious. So I used recycled paper istead. I did "glue" it with paint from THE JAR tho. I don't have that much glue and I'm hoping it will be enough for the stamps.

Also, I'm pretty sure the stamps will have better grip on this.

 

PART 4: UN-SORTING STAMPS

This took about two hours to do. Mainly cause they were stuck from humidity. My grandfather had sorted his collection by category in several books and part of me felt really weird taking them out and throwing them in a shoebox. 

But what I want for the background of "Same Address" is a chaotic mix of humanity and that will be hard to do by picking stuff from very organised pages. So mixing them in and just pulling out randomly is the way to go.

The main big collections he had in them were:

• Art
• History
• Flora
• Fauna
• Space
• Sport
• Transportation
• And a lot of smaller represented topics like literature, politics, places, heraldry and so on.

All of these were old too. He stopped actively collecting them in the late '90s. And he started the collection sometime in the '60s I think. So there are a lot of stamps from countries that no longer exist. 

I didn't get all of them out intact. Some were too badly stuck and ripped. But those won't go to waste either. I have a plan!

PART 5: TRANSFER

I got my prepped canvas, the sketch made on an old large envelope that I took apart, and my shoebox full of stamps. Time to get to work!

First step was to transfer my sketch with some carbon paper. That's pretty straightforward - just secure the carbon paper and the sketch with a little bit of paper tape and trace it. 

A little note about that carbon paper: it may be older than me! When my grandad retired in '97 he brought home a lot of stationary from his office. I was 6! And who knows how long he had them. I get my "don't waste stuff" gene from him. I have about 6 of these carbon paper packs. Looking to donate them. One is enough for me. The rest are unopened. 

Next I figured that it would be really hard to place the stamps around the Earth since I'd have to cut them. Doing it before I glued each individual one sounds really imprecise and cutting them after seems really risky. Might cut the canvas that way. 

So the solution was to stick them to the back of the sketch and then cut them together and stick them to the canvas. I used the ripped stamps for this part cause it will be mostly covered and the worse of the damage will be cut off anyway.

PART 6: THE BLUE MARBLE

I was so nervous about this part. The idea of painting the Earth always intimidated me, which is why my first idea was a more stylized version made in a shadowbox. But having to drop that idea, I didn't want to go stylized with paint cause I thought it would look weird. But damn I was anxious! 

I started with filling out the sketch with paint from THE JAR, leaving just a little space where the outlines are so I can see them later.

I find it easier to paint with mid tones and highlights over a dark background than painting with shadows over a light background....and yes...it's upside down. I didn't want to pull out the easel for this, instead I just leaned it against my shelf. But the right side up meant that I had to stand and paint and I'm lazy. So upside down it is!

Next step was the water. Which was pretty straight forward to do. Just a plain darker blue over all the watery areas and some lighter blue near the shores before the darker shade had a chance to dry so I could blend them together. 

Now the keen eyed observer might notice, despite the upsidedownness, that my continents are shit. I didn't try to get them perfect at all. There's no use, cause the atmospheric marbling effect will cover them. I just need them to peek through enough to make it seem like they're correct...if you squint. 

Just like with the continent shape, the continent colors I sorta just slapped on approximatively. A little bit of green and orange in the right places and it looked decent. 

The anxiety inducing part was the water detail and atmosphere. I was really worried I wouldn't manage to capture it but I am really happy with how it turned out. It was surprisingly easy to do. The shadow side gave me a bit of a heart attack tho, cause I thought I was ruining it but I managed to make it look ok.

All I had to do now is add a little shadow around the Earth to give it a bit of dimension over the stamps and paint the border.

Usually the border is the last thing I paint. I mask off the rest of the painting with tape and paper and paint a dark frame around it. It's extremely satisfying when I peel off the tape. However, this time I'm doing things a bit differently. I painted it now and I did it free hand and kinda chunky. When it dries I will mask the frame instead of the painting in order to give myself that nice clean straight line all around and I'll make sure the stamp edges match up so when I peel the tape off the border has that serated edge of the stamps. Otherwise I'd have to paint over them and I don't like the idea.

My reference for this was NASA's Blue Marble series.

PART 7: GLUE. SO MUCH GLUE!

Ok, I'm exaggerating. It wasn't that much glue. Actually I may have enough left to do it all over again....and enough stamps to do it at least 3 times over (I foresee a lot of stamp art in my future).

Took me about two days to glue on all the stamps. And it felt way less tedious than I feared it would be. It was kinda fun actually.

About half way there I did take a break from gluing stamps to make the letters. I picked a few colored offcuts from past projects. I was tempted to use patterned paper but ultimately thought that the letters should be really bold and stand out and the pattern paper would blend too much into the stamps.

I backed the letters with black paper that I ripped into shape instead of cutting it. Figured that would add some visual interest. The one thing that might bite me in the ass later is that I used an old shitty glue stick to glue the colored paper onto the black. They might fall off but that's an easy fix.

Peeling the tape from the edge to reveal the black frame was sooo satisfying.

At this point all I had to do was glue on the letters. I also did go in with a bit more of that shadow around the Earth to give it more contrast.

Now all I gotta do is take a better quality picture for the gallery.